ArcaMax

PARIS — Here we go again. Another U.S. President promises to fix things at home but, once in office, gets distracted by the irresistible thrill of overseas regime change. Americans are tired of it, including Trump himself, at least until he realized that playing pirate is way more fun than running a country.

Kidnapping the internationally recognized head of a sovereign nation by having U.S. special forces drag him out of bed in the dead of night, stuff him into a plane and fly him to New York isn’t exactly a “big win.” Just ask anyone who remembers the initial cheering in Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Chile, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Philippines or Libya — before everything went sideways.

A victory for democracy, say European leaders desperate for Trump to commit U.S. troops to babysit their own while they do air squats and burpees in a post-ceasefire Ukraine so they won’t have to worry about Russia showing up when things inevitably go belly-up.

Now that Trump has proof of concept in Venezuela, he’s talking about seizing Greenland for “national security” — part of the EU and Danish territory ever since the U.S. got the Danish West Indies in the 1919 deal (renamed the U.S. Virgin Islands). But who cares about boring history when you can re-enact the age of swashbuckling high seas hijinks? Does Amazon sell black eye patches?

Europeans, not wanting to elicit Trump’s wrath, are reduced to pleading for him to respect international law while applauding its violation in Venezuela “for democracy.” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni even stroked his ego, praising his “very assertive methods.”

When actions and words ignore common sense and European leaders start tiptoeing around phrases like “unilateral overthrow,” you can bet corruption is involved. For decades, European leaders have sold out their citizens to the same globalist neocon agenda of U.S.-led regime change that Trump just revived. The only thing annoying them now is the bull’s eye he’s aiming directly at them.

The America some cheer as being “so back” isn’t the America that Trump promised his voters. Nobody wanted him to “run Venezuela” for oil like a cartel jefe.

Speaking of which, how is that going to work when Maduro’s old team is still running the country? Team Trump says that the Venezuelan leadership must sell its oil to the U.S. and cut ties with Russia and China, with the unspoken threat that they’re next if they resist.

Trump already ousted one Venezuelan leader only to admit that the opposition puppets the neocons backed didn’t actually have the respect of the Venezuelan people. So who else is left to run the place? Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his fifth role in this administration? Might as well slap a Venezuelan presidential sash on him.

Any puppet propped up by Trump will serve Trump, not Venezuelans. So what will the people do? Stand by politely while American multinationals scoop up their natural resource wealth? History screams otherwise.

Chevron is already in-country, but Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips sound like they’d rather wrestle an alligator than deal with Trump’s latest nation-building project. “Uninvestable,” says Exxon’s CEO.

Team Trump treats Venezuelan oil like it’s American just because Big Oil once had to suffer through nationalization. How to avoid such a disaster from repeating itself? Maybe don’t invade, to start.

It’s a hard-learned lesson, apparently, but it might be starting to catch on. Chevron has recently endured attacks in the Niger Delta and the blowback from its resulting security crackdown.

And how many U.S. oil companies are left in Afghanistan after nearly two decades of U.S. occupation, now that the Taliban is back in charge? Hint: it’s a whole integer between − one and one.

France’s TotalEnergies learned the hard way in Mozambique with war crimes allegations, and suspended operations after attacks.

NGOs pursued them for violating the rights of locals in Uganda and Tanzania. Perenco had to abandon infrastructure in Guatemala under public pressure.

Trump says that the U.S. government will handle security this time. No doubt the locals will be thrilled to finally have a flag slapped on the faces that they’ll be aiming at — whether contractors or uniformed forces.

And then there’s the issue of Maduro. If he wins this show trial in New York and Trump has to put him back on the shelf, will he get a private ride home or have to fly economy back to Caracas? Earlier accusations that he led the Cartel de Los Solos were quietly dropped. The Justice Department now admits it doesn’t even exist.

No fentanyl charges either. But he did have weapons. Maybe even an entire army, since he was president. Now they’ll hope that a judge buys the gymnastics of kidnapping a leader and dragging him to trial abroad without an extradition treaty, all while ignoring Trump’s 90-minute televised diatribe insisting that it’s really about the oil.

Not a single Trump voter asked for any of this, but one of the early beneficiaries appears to be pro-Israel philanthropist and billionaire hedge-funder Paul Singer, who donated $5 million to Trump and now stands to turn his recent bargain-basement purchase of Venezuela’s U.S.-based refineries, designed for the country’s heavy crude, into a potential billionaire payday.

America First, indeed. If you’re in the donor class.